Radio interview with Minister Butler and Patricia Karvelas, ABC RN Breakfast - 1 November 2024

HOST, PATRICIA KARVELAS: A rise in overseas doctors, as well as more juniors taking up training, has led to an increase in the number of GPs. New figures from the Federal Government show more than 15,000 new doctors registered over the past two years. But are these GPs getting to the areas where they are most needed? The Federal Health Minister, Mark Butler, joins us now. Mark Butler, welcome to the program.
 
MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE, MARK BUTLER: Thank you Patricia.
 
KARVELAS: How many new doctors are we seeing?
 
BUTLER: We're seeing well over 15,000 in the last couple of years. That's the biggest increase last year, and this year - the two biggest increases in about a decade. We know if we're going to strengthen Medicare after a decade of cuts and neglect, we need more doctors and we need more bulk billing. Although we're not out of the woods yet, there is a lot of work still to do to strengthen our Medicare system. We are seeing things turn around in those areas that we need.
 
KARVELAS: Let's talk about more bulk billing. You've already increased some of the incentives, but it's still difficult for people to find a bulk billing doctor. What will you do next to try and increase that number of people who can get bulk billed?
 
BUTLER: Today is the 12 month anniversary of our investment in bulk billing. We tripled the bulk billing incentive, which was the request, made by the College of GPs. And when we did it, they said it would be a game changer. The position that we had last year was not a static position. What we had was bulk billing in freefall and doctors telling me that they were really concerned that if something wasn't done bulk billing really ran the risk of disappearing in our country altogether. Twelve months on from that huge investment, what we've seen most importantly is the slide in bulk billing has stopped but really pleasingly, in every state and territory, bulk billing is on the rise again. Now about three out of every four visits to the GP is bulk billed. In just those 12 months, we've seen more than 5 million additional free visits to the doctor. Now, as I said again, we've got more doctors, we've got more bulk billing, we've got Urgent Care Clinics that have already seen more than 850,000 patients through their clinics, all fully bulk billed. But we are not out of the woods yet. These things are making a meaningful difference, but we know there is more to do.
 
KARVELAS: Yeah, there is clearly more to do. The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners has questioned whether overseas doctors meet our standards. Is there any concern for you?
 
BUTLER: We've cut a whole lot of red tape for GPs coming to Australia from countries we have strong confidence in. There's only three of them on the list at the moment UK, Ireland and New Zealand. We had a very significant report from Robyn Kruk delivered not to health ministers but to National Cabinet, recommending a range of ways in which we could get overseas trained health professionals working more quickly. Too often we heard stories of doctors and nurses coming to Australia ready to work, but spending months and months sitting in apartments in Sydney and Melbourne and other cities, or doing jobs in hospitality and the rest instead of being on the floor. Cutting this red tape for GPs from those three countries in which we have very strong trust is going to mean doctors are on the floor practising more quickly. We have very strong confidence in those safety systems. These new GPs from those three countries will still, of course, have to go through a period of six-month supervision from another Australian GP.
 
KARVELAS: You mentioned that the bulk billing rate has been increased. Many Australians, though, as I mentioned, find it hard, especially in the country. Will there be a bigger focus on regional areas where we are getting many reports I hear it all the time of people just not being able to access help?
 
BUTLER: Yeah, that's a very big focus of ours. The first thing to say is I'm really pleased that the biggest increase is in bulk billing we've seen over the past 12 months have been in rural and regional Australia. The biggest increases to incentives happened in the country, not in the major cities. In a place like Dubbo, for example, a GP bulk billing a pensioner or a kid would receive 50 per cent more income after our changes last year than they would before. That's a big incentive for those doctors to bulk bill, and I'm hearing great stories about doctors either remaining firm in their existing practice to bulk bill or where they might have changed their practice reverting to bulk billing. The challenge in the country, though, has been getting enough doctors out there, and that's why it's so important that we've substantially increased the number of overseas trained doctors coming into the country, including from those countries I mentioned. Because one of the conditions they have when they do arrive in Australia is they must practice outside of the city. If they're going to bill Medicare, they have to be in country areas. That pipeline of overseas trained doctors, which was narrowing too much before COVID hit, we've broadened it a lot. We've got thousands more overseas trained doctors coming in since COVID than were coming in before COVID, and they're going to rural and regional Australia and making a real difference.
 
KARVELAS: I want to change the topic if I can minister to the story that's still obviously being discussed. We spoke about it at length with Bridget McKenzie before the news. Lots of focus on the Prime Minister's relationship with Alan Joyce. Last week it was his house that he'd bought, this week, flight upgrades. There has been this report in the Nine papers, someone calling him a sook out of your own ministry. That's pretty significant, someone leaking out of your ministry, calling the Prime Minister a sook?
 
BUTLER: Patricia, I don't comment on ministry meetings or cabinet meetings. I’m not going to do that.
 
KARVELAS: I'm not asking you to say anything about what was said, but what does that show?
 
BUTLER: I'm a bit of a traditionalist. I think cabinet and ministry meeting confidentiality is a really important part of our government system, not particularly a political point. It's a really important part of making sure that decisions are made with integrity and confidentiality. I have a practise of not responding to that. I will say, as someone who's known Anthony for a very long time and worked closely with him, the last thing I'd call him is a sook. You can't be a sook and get to the prime ministership of the country, or frankly, to the position of leader of the opposition. These are tough jobs, and they require someone with a real sense of purpose and real resilience and strength and that's the Anthony Albanese I know.
 
KARVELAS: But I do have to ask if that means a minister has called him a sook to a journalist doesn't that worry you?
 
BUTLER: I've read the story very quickly. Of course, it worries me when people leak. But that's been a part of politics on both sides of the political divide for as long as I've been involved in it. Every now and then someone shows a bit of ill-discipline. But I'm not going to pay much attention to it. We're focused on our job. You say this has been the big story of the week. And I get that it's occupied a lot of inches in the newspapers and time on radio. But we really are focused on how tough it is for households and cost of living. We're focused on the things we've already rolled out, but more importantly, what we can do in the future because we know it's still really tough for households.
 
KARVELAS: What's your message to colleagues who are leaking against the Prime Minister?
 
BUTLER: Knuckle down. We've got a big job as a government. We've got a great honour of being elected to government a couple of years ago. I think the things we've done to deliver tax cuts, and energy bill relief, and cheaper medicines, and more are making a real difference to Australian households, but it is still really tough and we've got to do more. We're focused on that job. What more can we responsibly do to help households through this really tough cost of living period.
 
KARVELAS: And are they risking Labor's chances at the next election by doing this?
 
BUTLER: No. I'm not going to overstate one potential leak out of one meeting. It's ill-disciplined, it makes me cross. But I'm focused on a big job in the health portfolio, and I know my colleagues are as well. I'm not going to overstate the importance of one slip, but I do restate the importance now more than most periods of time, given how tough it is here in Australia and across the world, how tough it is for households. They need a government focused on doing everything we can to help them and that's what this government is doing.
 
KARVELAS: Do you accept that the Prime Minister has more questions to answer? There is a view that there may have been contact at some point between his office asking for upgrades. Will that be further clarified next week?
 
BUTLER: He's been utterly definitive about this over the last 24 or 36 hours, and he took the time to make sure. He's been in Parliament for 30 years. He had his office assiduously go through his records so that he could be completely confident to the Australian people in saying what he said, he did not make any contact with Alan Joyce, which was the allegation for upgrades. He can say that with utter confidence, having had his office check his records, bookings are made through the usual channel, upgrades happen in the way they happen for all other MPs. He's been entirely clear about this. The lack of clarity is on the other side. You've had Bridget McKenzie on, the chief prosecutor for this case has egg all over her face. And we also know that Peter Dutton has a taste for private planes, whether it's Gina Rinehart's plane or having spent almost a quarter of a million dollars of taxpayer funds in six months last year taking private charters instead of commercial flights.
 
KARVELAS: We're out of time, but I really want to thank you for making time for us this morning, Health Minister, I appreciate it.
 
BUTLER: Thanks, Patricia.